Chapter Seventeen
Della was listless. It had been mere days since Andrew had left, and she’d already begun to question how she’d ever gone entire years without seeing his face, hearing his voice, feeling the warmth that he uniquely brought her.
Andrew’s absence, like the worst of her pain, made her deeply emotional and almost destructively reflective.
Whereas the flaring of her pain often made her quietly introspective, this puddle of overwhelming feeling in which she’d suddenly immersed herself prompted her to speak.
Clara was, as always, her chosen confidant.
They sat in her chambers, and Della tried to get comfortable in the one chair in this house she actually liked, her feet propped up on a matching stool.
“This is all very formal,” Clara remarked. “I feel as if I’ve been summoned because I am in trouble.”
“That is ridiculous. You are never in trouble. Not with me, anyway,” Della scoffed. “I simply wanted to talk.”
“We talk every day, do we not?” Clara asked.
“Yes, but this is important.” She spoke as sincerely as she possibly could, and as soon as her hip unlocked from the painful position in which it had been stuck, she readjusted herself to set her feet on the ground and face Clara where she sat on the floor with her back resting against the bedpost and her fingers tangled in the thick carpet.
It was not unusual for Clara to prefer the floor to the furniture.
Many who knew her thought it one of her many charms. Della thought it a luxury to have a body durable enough to regularly rise from such a position.
Clara nodded, and she looked oddly serious.
“I’m sure you know,” Della started, “I’ve been feeling .
. . rather alone, lately. It seems that feeling worsens every time I see my parents.
And to know that they’ve been keeping something like an inheritance from me .
. .” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t have words to describe how that felt. She didn’t think there were any.
“And then Andrew came, and that first meal we all had together was so wonderful. It was so incredibly nice to just sit down and look at all of the people I’m surrounded by. It’s such a privilege to have all of you.”
Clara simply smiled, surely knowing that Della had more to say. Where Clara always spoke with immediacy and conviction, Della was typically more thoughtful about each of her words. Overly so, such that she often regretted uttering them in the first place.
“I have been thinking,” she sighed, waiting for her words to settle into order in her own mind, “about my parents, and the way that we as a society treat those who fall ill.”
“They,” Clara gently interrupted, wrapping her hands around her knees and pulling them to her chest. “Not we. The way they treat those who fall ill.”
“Right, yes,” Della nodded. At least in this instance, she appreciated the reminder that she was no longer a part of polite society.
“When my parents sent me here, I don’t think I ever stopped to consider what that meant.
I’m certain I always knew their reasoning was not as they say it was.
It did not take me long to discover it was never for my benefit.
“I am alone.” Della continued. Clara opened her mouth to speak, to refute that claim, almost certainly, but Della continued.
“I am alone, but not alone. Because I have you, and everyone else. But that is . . . purely luck. I’ve no ability to go out into the world and make my own friends or develop my own interests beyond the walls of this house. ”
Her hip began to ache again, the kind of pain she knew meant she needed to move.
Della stood, wobbling only a bit as she took the first steps around her room.
The ache subsided some as she slowly paced, avoiding where Clara sat, so as not to trip over her.
She heard that familiar, loud crack that she really didn’t think bones ought to make.
“I was angry for a bit, as I’m sure you remember.
There were tears and hateful writings for no one’s eyes but my own.
” Della sighed, remembering that period of her life.
At twenty-five, eighteen seemed so unbelievably long ago.
As if all of that had happened to a different person entirely.
She wondered how she’d managed to change so much when nothing else had. The scenery, the house, the people.
“I do remember,” Clara laughed. “I was terrified myself, starting my first job. There were rumors of your mother, of why this house had been closed for so long before you arrived here. No one wanted to work for her—that’s the only reason I was given the position as a girl of eighteen with no experience or reference to speak of.
I thought you’d be everything people thought your mother to be. But you were just a girl, like I was.”
Della continued to pace, her footsteps slowing until she leisurely ambled across the room. She couldn’t recall ever speaking about this with Clara, of those first days they’d all been at Westfield Manor.
“I’m certain the rumors were awful, but some of them might have been true.”
“I certainly hope not,” Clara laughed. “The one about your mother hating the country so much that she’d ordered the house closed, sure. And how she sent your first maid away. But not the one about her pushing a servant down the stairs in a fit of rage.”
“She would never,” Della gasped. Her mother was many things, but she was the furthest thing from violent. Physically, anyway.
“I know,” Clara nodded. She released her legs and extended them out in front of her, pointing and flexing her toes in her oversized boots that were made for a man.
Della was surprised to see her still wearing them.
Usually, they’d be abandoned somewhere by this point in the day.
“It all got very out of hand. You know how people talk.”
“Exactly,” Della said, returning to the comfort of her armchair in the middle of the room.
“People talk, and things get out of hand, and that’s the reason people like me end up in horrible situations.
The idea of their sick daughter remaining at home for all of polite society to see was too much to bear, so they sent me here.
And I meant what I said, Clara, it is truly a privilege to have you all here. Not all are so fortunate.”
“What do you mean?” Clara asked, her entire face scrunching up like a confused child.
“As I sat in front of all of you that night, I thought of what it might be like if I were truly alone. If I’d been abandoned by my parents and everyone else.
Not all families can afford a household for one person.
Not all even care enough to employ them.
Think of what could happen to me once my parents are gone and my livelihood depends on David. ”
Clara shook her head immediately, like she couldn’t give the idea any space within her brain.
Della couldn’t blame her for that, for she often felt the same.
She naturally avoided thoughts of that upcoming portion of her life.
It was a terrifying prospect, the idea of having no control and depending on someone who seemed to care so little for her.
Della suppressed a shudder. As difficult as it was to prod at the sore spot in her own future, she felt she had to. They had to. There was good to be done.
“Think of the others. Those who don’t have a country house to be banished to. Those who are made to feel as if they are burdening their families with their very existence. Those who end up alone, for one reason or another.”
Della stopped to catch her breath, as her mind had been racing faster than her mouth could speak.
She thought of Mercy, wherever she may be.
She hoped she wasn’t alone. She pressed a warm, aching hand to the center of her chest just to feel the racing beat there.
Suddenly, that rhythm felt like one of purpose.
“But what are we able to do for those people, beyond thinking of them?” Clara asked. Her face still appeared confused, and the furrow of her brow made Della realize that she wasn’t entirely making sense. That happened sometimes, when she forgot herself in the furor of her own thoughts.
“I’ve an idea,” Della said simply. She smiled, and something about that twitch of her lips was freeing. She felt some of the rebelliousness her eighteen-year-old self had been known for coming back. It crept into her psyche slowly and quietly, like a child sneaking back home after dark.
It was there, in the shadow of her teenage petulance, that Della found herself again.
“Should I be concerned?” Clara asked, crossing her arms and shifting that expression of confusion to one of amusement. “The last time you had an idea, we ended up walking back from the lake after a swim in the pouring rain. It was frigid, and you nearly caught your death.”
That had been a horrible idea, one of those moments of teenage immaturity.
Della had known it would rain. She always knew.
She’d thought if she caught her death out here in the country, it would be a kind of poetic justice.
How wrong she’d been. Dying in misery was not justice. Living in utter contentment was.
“I think that we could help these people. Some of them, anyway. If my parents speak the truth, I am owed an inheritance. Property that could be used as a haven for young, ill girls like myself. Girls who have nowhere to go.”
“We?” Clara asked. “You’d take me with you?” Her voice was fragile and quiet, so unlike her that Della did something equally out of character. She stood from her chair and lowered herself to the floor next to where Clara sat. The motion was ungraceful and inelegant, but she made it.
“Clara,” she grasped her hands, “that day at the lake, I told you to run ahead back to the house and I’d make it there eventually.
You wouldn’t leave me, not for anything.
We both nearly caught our deaths out there, together.
No one is left behind—I’m fairly sure that is the entire point of the idea. ”
Clara smiled. She was so rarely emotional like this with anyone. Radiant happiness was at the core of her personality, but there was also a deep vulnerability to her that not many ever got to see.
“I’ve no idea how we are ever to act on such an idea,” Della sobered. Reality was swift in setting in, as soon as she’d formed this grand idea, she’d realized the magnitude of what she was actually trying to execute. “My parents will never allow me my rightful property.”
“Well,” Clara smiled again. This one was cunning and almost smug. “Thankfully you’ve retained the services of an excellent solicitor.”